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NASCAR round-up: Stewart named driver of the year; Earnhardt Jr. tops sales; more

December 13, 2011

Tony Stewart, the 2011 Sprint Cup champion, was named Driver of the Year at the annual NASCAR awards banquet. Photo by LAT Photographic

Reigning NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Tony Stewart is the overwhelming winner of this year's Driver of the Year Award. He also won the DOTY Award in 2005, the year he won the second of his three Cup titles.

Driving for his own Stewart-Haas Racing team, Stewart won five races, all during the season-ending, 10-race Chase for the Championship. He also had one pole, nine top-five finishes and 19 top-10s during the 36-race season. He and Carl Edwards finished the year tied in points, but Stewart was the champion based on the first-ever “most-wins” tiebreaker, 5-1.

The selection panel gave Stewart 15 votes and one each to Edwards, Izod IndyCar Series champion Dario Franchitti, short-track, open-wheel racer Jason Meyers and drag racer Del Worsham. In the fourth-quarter DOTY voting, Stewart beat Edwards and Meyers (162-73-51), taking all but one first-place vote.

His father, the late Dale Earnhardt, was sixth with the No. 96 Cardinal Tractor Ford from Lionel's new NASCAR Classics Line. In 1978, Earnhardt drove the Will Cronkite-owned and -prepared car in four Cup races. A year later, he got his first Cup win, finished seventh in points and was rookie of the year in the No. 2 blue-and-yellow Chevy of team owner Rod Osterlund.

Tony Stewart was fifth in sales this season with his No. 14 Mobil 1 Chevy and eighth with his No. 14 Office Depot Chevy. Harvick was 10th with another die-cast design, the No. 29 Budweiser Military Tribute Chevy.

Speed TV executive to leave network

Hunter Nickell, president of Speed TV, is leaving the network at the end of the year. During his tenure the motorsports-focused network added nearly 16 million homes to its Nielsen Household reach of 84 million. It also added several high-profile events to its broadcast lineup, including the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race, NASCAR's Hall of Fame induction ceremonies and all three of NASCAR's postseason awards banquets.

Nickell will finish several Speed projects and continue to explore opportunities within the Fox Sports Media Group. An interim replacement will be named soon. Nickell went to Speed in 2005 after 12 years as general manager of Fox Sports Net South, where he oversaw the nation's largest regional sports television network.

The rest of the top-10 moments: Brad Keselowski's win at Pocono Raceway a few days after breaking his left ankle in a testing accident; Jeff Gordon's 85th Cup win, at Atlanta Motor Speedway in September; Regan Smith's breakthrough win at Darlington Raceway in May; Jimmie Johnson's 0.0002-second margin of victory at Talladega Superspeedway in April; Paul Menard's breakthrough win at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in July; Austin Dillon becoming the youngest Camping World Truck Series champion; Danica Patrick's fourth-place (best-ever by a female driver) in the Nationwide Series at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in March, and Ricky Stenhouse (Nationwide) and Austin Dillon (Truck Series) winning championships after being their series' rookie of the year in 2010.